


anyone who knows what love is (will understand)

by MamaWeeds



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: 60s AU, Butch kara, F/F, i don't actually watch this show i'm just starved for lesbian content, poor lonely lena, she'll be fine though this is a happy place, take a shot for each historic lesbian reference you can find i've been doing my homework
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2020-02-29 05:45:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18772405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MamaWeeds/pseuds/MamaWeeds
Summary: "It’s one thing to learn that women like this were allowed to exist— not smoted by God, or squatting on the street, or in the asylum. It’s an entirely different mental framework to recognize herself there, and to feel the sun on her face for the first time. To run her hands through Kara’s boy-short hair, and wiggle her fingers under the waistband of her trousers. An excitement and hope in life she’d never believed in before between their palms."Or, Lena is a former-heiress turned disowned baby lesbian in 1968, and Kara is the butch that's about to ruin her life (and her mattress)





	1. Chapter 1

If the paparazzi still followed Lena Luthor around, they probably would not be able to recognize her. 

The first thing to go, after she had secured her first tenuous steps to freedom, had been her hair: it had been Lillian’s project as long as she could remember. She had sat countless hours enduring the tug of the boar bristle hairbrush, the tight pulling pins and barrettes, countless burns from the hot curlers that she was subjected to most weekends of her childhood. 

The long, glossy black length that fell to her navel made her a proper lady, a refined high-bred Luthor-- it had to go, obviously. After her fall Lena spent the first night in her new apartment with a pair of dull kitchen shears in one hand, trying to thrum up the courage to make the first cut. 

(It would be the crackle of the station finally coming in over her shitty clock radio, announcing that heiress Lena Luthor, who had created shockwaves with her announcement to transfer from the Radcliffe Institute to MIT in the fall, had fallen sick and would be spending some time out of the public eye in her family’s chateau in the Alps.) 

Each black curl landed around her bare feet like the beginning of a question mark. The little tag ends of hairs that fell from the scissors itched around her neck and toes, and as Lena looked into the mirror at herself she felt her face shift into place for the first time. She swung her new chin-length crop, wearing nothing but her new underwear (and no bra for the first time since she was thirteen) and grinning like a loon. 

After her hair, it followed that the next remnant of her old life that needed to be shed was her wardrobe. Everything she had worn since her adoption had been chosen by Lillian. Evening gowns, sweater sets, her plaids for boarding school. She’d never been allowed to wear jeans in public: she had bought a pair that she wore indoors only, lounging in bed with her roommate gone downtown, listening to the records she’d paid someone else to buy for her.

There was an alley behind her apartment building where the garbage chutes let out into the dumpster. So late that it was early in the morning, Lena tried to stay as silent and still as she could lugging a canvas duffle bag of her clothes down six flights of stairs and out into the alley. She had to creep through broken bottles and the open tins of cat food the Super left out before reaching the empty metal trash can she had staked out for this occasion. 

She stares at the jewel toned mound in the rusty tin can, wondering just how much money she was standing over. She thought about it often, the amount of luxury thrust on her from her adoption onwards, the sheer amount of equity that swathed everything from her shoes to her haircare products. A needle of guilt wiggles under the skin of her neck. She considers her choices. The dress and stockings and itchy wool skirts have collared her, choked her with discomfort and humiliation for her entire life. She hated the fabric in the can, as much as one can. One the other hand, she was completely on her own now. Her rent was paid up for the first two months, but other than that she had no source of income anymore. No trust fund, no job, no personal savings. She didn’t even have her own bank account until yesterday. Burning the clothes meant sending a small fortune up in flames, and that might just be the decision that sinks her grab for freedom. She gnaws at her thumbnail, stewing with her thoughts. (Lena Luthor how many times to I have to slap that hand out of your mouth before you get the idea.)

Eventually she walks away, bag stuffed with clothes and zipped tight.

The third step to her transformation occurs the next morning. After finishing off the remnants of her coffee and eggs (and ignoring how empty the fridge is afterwards) she is ready for her day: today’s agenda includes trying to sell whatever she can, using that money to buy food, and, time permitting, working up the courage to go into the bookshop the hidden flyer in her copy of The Well of Loneliness advertises for in faded lavender.

Even looking at the flyer gives her butterflies, and a bit of anxiety. She has walked back and forth in front of the store twice already, trying and failing to boil up enough courage to walk inside. From a cafe across the street she has spent over an hour on a single cup of coffee, observing each and every person she saw pass through its doors. The types of people that she had seen on the news before her mother changed the channel, marching, holding signs, kissing. Women wearing men’s clothes, with men’s haircuts. Men in tight clothes, beads and jewels, dancing and embracing in platform shoes, distributing flyers, yelling on bullhorns. 

Today, Lena Kieran Luther, mark her words, will pass the threshold of this new world. She will walk through the physical doorway into a realm of the metaphysical, into her new self more clearly than the dungarees or the haircut have been able to push her. She’s at the cafe again, finishing off the last dregs of the black coffee she has been nursing for over forty five minutes now (she can’t afford anything more). Across the street she’s counted four people to have entered, all of which she’s seen before. Regulars. Lena’s about to turn away before a silhouette she’s not familiar with strides into view from the left.

It’s a woman, she thinks. Tall, with a fine back and broad shoulders. A dyke, definitely-- even Lena in her complete lack of experience can tell that. She’s wearing a men’s suit, sloppy and charming, with cuffs on her pants that ride up high enough to show mismatched socks. Loafers beaten half to death, short, tousled blonde hair-- no, flaxen. Lena might even say golden if she had been raised to exalt such things. The woman turns to laugh at something her companion, a stern looking red haired woman, says and Lena catches her face. Lena feels her heart mumbling in the side of her neck, a warmth creeping up into her chest like a shot of whisky. The woman is beautiful, handsome, with wicked glittering eyes and a boyish sort of slouch to her shoulders. Her mouth is red smiling, her eyes poetically blue. 

In a golden, current-charged instant, they’re looking at one another. It feels like there’s a main line from her navel to her pupils, and the handsome woman bites her lip a bit and blushes. Lena feels herself smile without consciously allowing for it. The red haired woman pulls on the blonde’s shoulder, and she pulls her head away with what seems to be a little reluctance. That simmers in Lena’s stomach, turning into a full boil when the woman turns back once she’s in the door frame. When their eyes lock for the second time, the blonde has the audacity to wink.

The woman is gone as quickly as she came, pulled inside the bookstore to a laughing and raucous group of friends. Lena can see some of their heads over the bookshelves through the window, angeled with laughter. 

The warmth from earlier dissipates quickly after that.

She leaves as nice of a tip as she can and walks home huddled against the wind. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tw for slight suicidal ideation, generally healthy mental fuckery, the sixties.

Lena Luthor might be the loneliest person on the planet, give or take a few cattle ranchers and lighthouse keepers. She was beyond grateful to be have gotten a job doing research work for one of Columbia’s biomedical laboratories-- her money was nearly gone, and she’d been eating rice, beans, and eggs for every meal of the last week. However.

 

Being the only woman working for the university would have been hard enough on its own, but her coworkers made it unbearable. It wasn’t that they were cruel to her outwardly, it was that they _ignored_ her almost completely. 

 

Her contributions to group discussions were spoken over, her hand disregarded, her attempts at poliet lunchtime conversation nodded at. She leaves each day cold through her entire body. Numbness has crept into her fingers and lips, and they feely mumbly and static-filled with every movement. Lena is used to being overlooked and silenced (a life as the adopted girl-child in the Luthor household prepared her well for that), but what she isn’t used to having absolutely _no one_ in the world to talk to. Jessica, her best friend from school, would send her lovely letters, and made twice-weekly phone calls that Lena counted on like holidays, but beyond that, she was truly alone. 

 

Being lonely and being a lesbian were irrevocably intertwined, as far as Lena had known. Of course it’s never been said in so many words, but everyone around her seemed to know that there was something different about the sullen, dark little girl. Peculiar. Strong-willed. Unladylike. One of her early report cards from grade school had a regiment of straight, perfect A’s, and a note from Sister O’Connelly at the bottom saying that it would be best to nip her ‘bad behaviors’ in the bud now while they were still fixable. She could never quite figure out what she was doing that was so bad, but after reading those words strange, acrylic guilt started to bubble up in her tummy, coat the walls, and take up residence there for the next ten years.

 

As time went on she began to understand some intrinsic truths in her own body that made her flush with shame. Her mind, prone to wandering during her long boring classes, began to take up an elaborate and...exotic fantasy life of its own. 

 

Her classmates began to flit in and out from empty locker rooms, her dimly lit bedroom, the bathtub. They touched her in ways that she had only recently tried on herself, long slender fingers with clean white Catholic boarding school nails scratching lightly over her nipples, over the valleys of her hips and stomach. Lena spent most of her lunch periods senior year imagining red-haired Mallory from US Government in her underwear, sucking at the hollow behind her ear. In this fantasy, they were both in their socks, and Mallory’s foot trailed up and down Lena’s calf as her sweet freckled fingers pressed against the wet spot in her panties: Lena couldn’t look her in the eye for the rest of the year after that.

 

Of course, back then she thought this was another symptom of the same badness that her mother punished her for endlessly. The same innate badness that had been visible  enough even at birth, pushing her birth mother to abandon her. She isolated herself from the other girls at school out of fear of contaminating them, and she managed to graduate high school without a single friend. College had not been much easier-- meeting Jessica in a chemistry lab her first year at Radcliffe had been a godsend. They had both been sent to sit in the very back of the lecture together, as to not distract the Harvard boys. She was loyal, fierce, and not afraid to speak up. Lena adored her.

 

Jessica was also the only human being not currently incarcerated in maximum security prison who knew Lena’s secret, and guarded it closely and with the seriousness that she approached everything with. And this was serious-- besides public shaming and being disowned by her second family, expulsion from school for breaking the student code of conduct was another looming risk. 

 

“I’m at peace with it, honestly,” Lena had told Jess one night at the library. They were completely alone at three in the morning, hidden at a desk in one of the quietest levels of the stacks, voices barely above a whisper.

 

“At peace with what?”

 

“With being alone. Which isn’t to say that it isn’t painful. I mean, you’ve seen… you know.” Jess had nodded at that, and Lena paused to regain her composure. She needed to get this off of her chest, and Jessica would wait.

 

“I just. I know that there isn’t a chance, not with my family. After everything with Lex. Lilian will have me sent to fucking Bellevue if anything else got out to sully our reputation. I’m sure she must think it’s some big cosmic inside joke that I’m the last hope for the Luthors. But she can’t control me from the outside anymore. She’s been scouting out this year’s crop of Rockefeller’s and Mellon’s-- I can smell the word ‘engagement’ on her breath every time she calls me.” She laughs once, bitter, cracking like frozen asphalt. Jess grabs her hand tightly, but says nothing. 

 

“I’m sure it will be romantic to him, at least. Blushing virgin. Spreading her legs for him before she’s ever been kissed.”

 

“Lee…”

 

But Lena’s on a roll now. Hot, stinging tears ache at the corners of her eyes. Her throat is tight and her face is burning.

 

“I used to think that once I went to college, things would be different. That I’d be sneaking off into the Village every weekend and marching in parades. But _nothing_ has changed. Nothing. I can still feel her collar around my fucking neck, squeezing in my sleep. It hurts everywhere Jess. I’m losing weight. My hair looks as awful as my skin. I vomit every day, and hands won’t stop shaking and _I can’t do this anymore_.”

 

The dam breaks-- Lena is sobbing now, loud and undignified, the way she can when she knows that there will be no consequences. Jess just cradles her head and holds her tight. Lena’s heart breaks at the feeling, and her breathing picks up so that she’s actively hyperventilating. 

 

“Lena. Lena, sweetheart, you need to breathe. Match me, ok?” She tries, and after a few minutes her sobs have quieted down to gentle crying.

 

“We’ll get through this. We’ll figure something out, I promise you.”

 

She hadn’t believed a word of that then, but now, in her bed, in the apartment she paid for with her own money, wearing the clothes that she wanted to, a great feeling of relief made Lena almost giddy with lightheadedness. She had a crush on a woman that could reciprocate. She could go to a gay bar if she wanted, read books with words like ‘fury’ and ‘pride’ in the title. The precipice of discovery was looming, and as exciting as the feeling was, she felt a bit overwhelmed with the magnitude of the changes that were about to occur. The barred-off, dangerous terrain of her sexuality was now open for exploration, and Lena hadn’t the faintest idea where to begin. 

 

“Oh my God, Lena, a hot butch girl at a _gay bookstore_ openly checks you out and you just sat there?”

 

She had the scarf she knit last year pulled all the way up to her nose-- just in case a determined member of the press recognized her face. They hadn’t yet tracked her down and she would like to keep it that way. The wind outside pressed in through the seams of glass and metal with a high-pressured whistling sound that she was sure Jess could hear on the line.

 

“Sweetheart, no one has ever looked at someone else when you’re within twenty visible feet. Especially not dreamy gay women.”

 

“Well, even so, she probably assumed I’m straight. I haven’t gotten the look down quite right yet.” This provoked a long, annoying groan from Jess.

 

“Are you kidding me? There’s no way she couldn’t tell. You can tell just by looking.”

 

“ Uh huh. Well,  _y_ _ou_ can’t tell anything just by looking because _you_ aren’t a member of the club, darling. Invite only.”

 

“And you’re deflecting! Look, I’ve got to go, but my advice? Stop being such a wimp. You live in _New York City_. One of the only places on the planet where you can meet lesbians face-to-face. Your magazine subscription days are over, doll, go out and get laid. Go to that bookstore every day if you have to until you see that girl again and one of you steps up to the plate. I love you.”

 

“I love you too, irritating hag.” 

 

Lena hung up the phone. Of course she had been about three buildings down the street from that bookstore, trying to will up the courage to go inside. She had called Jess for some encouragement because her heart rate was high enough to put down a cheetah.

 

She breathes in deep. From the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of gold bobbing on top of a scruffy blazer. Lena held herself perfectly still, the way she learned to when she lived at home and wanted to avoid being noticed. She knows that she if she’s wrong, if her brain is just playing tricks on her for wanting something so badly, it will hurt enough that she’ll need to go home. She was too scared to look, but she didn’t want to miss her entirely (if it is her, and something a bit rabid in her heart _knows_ that it is). 

 

Lena leaned over in the phonebooth to grab her umbrella-- when she straightened out, the sight in front of the glass door jolts her entire body.

 

“Hi there,” the blonde woman says, bright and charming. Even through the gloom of early winter, her hair was bright and tufted, like a chrysanthemum. She might have had a tie on earlier, because her collar is askew and turned upwards at one corner. She’s tall and broad-shouldered for a woman but the suit she had on was baggy in the arms and waist. Her glasses were discretely fixed with black electrical tape on the left arm.

 

“Hi. Hi to you.” Lena replies, stiltedly.

 

She could feel her face flush scarlet almost immediately. Oh _Christ help her_ it didn’t take more than two seconds for her to make a complete ass out of herself. 

 

The blonde woman smiles, and Lena felt a gay little catch in her chest. She’s _beautiful_. Handsome.

 

“Are you looking for someone? I’ve seen you staring at the door for a while, maybe I can help you? I work at Divers.”

 

Ah, so that explains why Lena had seen her there so frequently. She felt that sweet cocktail of humiliation at being caught-- obviously she’d been less sneaky and more glaringly obvious in her observations. 

 

“Oh, no I was just. I was waiting for my, my friend. She goes there a lot and I was waiting for her.”

 

As soon as she said it, she wanted to punch herself.

 

“Oh! Who’s your friend? I definitely know her if she comes in that often.” She’s so kind and excited that Lena couldn’t pretend to be upset. Really, she was the only one to blame. For someone who is often the smartest person in the room, Lena felt abysmally stupid.

 

“I. Well, I, you don’t. Because, uh, she. She’s--” 

 

There's a few seconds of confused silence. A crinkle forms between Kara's blonde eyebrows. Lena runs through ten break-neck exit strategies in her head in that moment, each dumber and more desperate than the last. 

 

_I have an appointment. Psychiatrist. Chiropractor. Dead cat. Plants need watering. Milk expiring._

 

Thank God Kara steps in. 

 

“Hey, I'm-- it’s totally fine. I’ve been right where you are, and, uh, nervous, too. When I first moved here I used to walk past this place five, six times a day for like, two weeks. Just trying to work up the courage to go inside. I never would have, either, if I hadn’t been invited."

 

For a natural pause, it seemed to go on for an eternity. They were looking at each other, so thoroughly Lena forgot to feel self-conscious. She forgot about most things, honestly, including the flood of bullshit that had just come out of her mouth not two minutes before. So, she says:

 

“Who invited you in?”

 

Kara’s smile widened, and she rocked back on her heels with her fists thrust deep into the pockets of her trousers. 

  
“My sister, actually. Well, she wasn’t my sister at the time, we didn’t even know each other. This was a few years ago, and after seeing me hanging around for like the thousandth time, she grabbed the back of my arm as I was walking away from the door and said _‘Come inside, let me introduce you._ And that was that.”

 

They lapsed into a comfortable silence after that. Lena feels...some way. Something she couldn't name. Tingly, and like her face was tight. There was something glowing in her upper chest, right underneath her throat. The wind whipped around their figures, cold for the first time this year, and the back of Kara's blazer flaps enough that she could see the rumple of her white shirt underneath. Her cheeks and the tip of her nose were blush-pink, and Lena could see faint freckling around her hairline. She was probably from somewhere warm, and far away.  Born in the sun, on the coast, or on peels of farmland somewhere out west. Grew up wearing shorts, running around and riding bikes.  _Kara_  was warm, too. Her smile, her body language, but also, Lena can feel, physically: she can sense her body heat between the wind and short distance.

 

She wanted some for herself. Warmth. Freckles. A reason to smile back at Kara the way she was smiling at Lena. 

 

"Would you like to come inside?" Kara asked her. She didn't even blink. She didn't hesitate.

 

"Yes." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> follow me @mamaweeds

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr at mamaweeds-- i've never watched supergirl as a disclaimer i just read the fanfics lmao


End file.
